When I was a kid, I had a really weird thought.
Was this whole world… real?
What happened when I wasn’t looking?
Would cars still drive? Would cats still leap? Would people still walk and talk and shop and hop?
Sometimes I’d try and catch the world out. I’d stare one way, or look another, or maybe even pretend I was falling asleep… and then BOOM.
I’d snap my head round and try and see if everyone had stopped doing whatever it was they’d been doing; if all this really was for me.
Anyway, it turns out the world just carried on very nicely without me. I had really very little effect on things. But I think it was my way of trying to make sense of something as huge and busy as the world.
The thought stayed with me, though. Imagine if the world really did stop sometimes. And imagine if you were the only person who could walk around in it when it did.
That thought became the basis for my first kids’ book – Hamish and the Worldstoppers.
Hamish is 10 years old. He lives in an extremely boring town called Starkley. Would you like to know an interesting fact about Starkley?
Fact: there are no interesting facts about Starkley.
But then, one day, something interesting does happen.
The world stops.
The birds in the sky. The people on the streets.
Everything. Just. Stops.
Everything except Hamish.
And that’s when he can have fun. Because imagine being a kid in a world without rules. Where you can do all the things you’re always told you’re too young to do. That’s why the first thing Hamish does is grab a moped and rocket around town.
I asked some kids down my street what they’d do if the whole world stopped except them.
One said he’d lick all the sweets in a sweet shop.
Another said he’d drive a Ferrari all the way to Alton Towers and then not have to queue up for anything.
One girl said she’d pick up all the dog poo on her street and put it all in the pocket of the man who lets his dog poo all over the street.
I liked that one.
The world stopping seemed to me to be the kind of idea I’d have really gotten into as a kid, too. I used to love the high concepts of Roald Dahl, just like everyone else who’s ever written a piece about children’s books. I liked them because they made me wonder, but because they also made me laugh… and sometimes cower.
So I knew that Hamish couldn’t just have fun. There had to be an encroaching danger; some kind of monster in the cupboard.
And so The Terribles were born…
I’ve written plenty of books for grown-ups, but I had more fun writing Hamish than almost anything else. Coming up with names – Scratch Tuft, Mole Stunk, Madame Cous Cous, Ever Longlather, Grenville Bile and so on – made me extremely happy. Sharing the ideas with my son was incredibly special. I can see why people who start just can’t stop.
We made this trailer, which the Guardian has the first look at, to try and whet kids’ appetites, and get them thinking about the things that they would do if the whole world stopped.
Because what if everything we think we know just isn’t true?
What if the world actually does stop?
And if it does, all I can say is, you better hope it wasn’t you that let your dog do its business on the street the other day…
